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Notable & Quotable

Updated April 9, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

Zlavoj Zizek in the London Review of Books, March 18:

Even racism is now reflexive. Consider the Balkans. They are portrayed in the liberal Western media as a vortex of ethnic passion--a multiculturalist dream turned into a nightmare. The standard reaction of a Slovene (I am one myself) is to say: "yes, this is how it is in the Balkans, but Slovenia is not part of the Balkans; it is part of Mitteleuropa; the Balkans begin in Croatia or in Bosnia; we Slovenes are the last bulwark of European civilisation against the Balkan...